I am a parkrun fanatic. parkrun has me completely hooked and now I want to use my parkrun blog to spread the word about this fantastic, free, all-inclusive, community-based, weekly 5km running event.

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Wednesday, 27 April 2011

parkrun freedom is....great 10km training

Its just so easy to double up your parkrun freedom for simple 10km training!

For those that don't know already, a "parkrun freedom" is simply the act of running an official parkrun course at any time other than at an official parkrun event.

Once you become a parkrun regular, and learn your local parkrun course, what could be simpler than doubling it up for a perfect 10km course?

If you are training for a 10km event this is great. The more you run at parkrun and the more familiar the course becomes, the easier it is to work out how to run at a specific target pace. Whether you want to run at a specific pace during a training session or just do the distance, a parkrun freedom is just as ideal. What more do you need than parkrun!

I have run a parkrun freedom many times and plenty of those have been done as two back-to-back to double up to 10km. I have run many at a comfortable pace and some at close to full race pace.

However, recently I have started running intervals within the my freedom run. If you are looking to get a 10km PB, intervals are a great way to practice running at or faster than your target race pace. I have tried a few different takes on interval training during a parkrun freedom:

1 minute fast then 2 minutes recovery,

2 minutes fast then 2 minutes recovery,

but today I tried something new: half a lap at target pace and half a lap recovery.

This run today was a great way to practice at target race pace. I have to say that if anything it actually made my target race pace feel a little easy. Maybe easier would be a better description!

After running 34 parkruns and 70 odd freedom runs, I know exactly what time I should reach each point on the course for quite a range of target times. This makes it really easy to know my pace for half a lap and to know whether or not I am on course for my target time at various points prior to half way. So much so, that on my 4 half laps aiming for race pace today, I was never more than 2 seconds off my target time (under each time of course!).

Now experts may tell me that each training run should have one specific purpose. And I would reply saying that my purpose today was to run intervals to practice at target race pace. But today I achieved more than this by using the parkrun course. Not only did I run a total of 5km at my target 5km race pace, but I also ran a 10km in a fairly decent time (42:40), with half of it feeling very comfortable indeed. Brilliant for morale!

What more can I say, a parkrun freedom can be a very useful aid when training for a 10km race. Whether your target is a specific time, a PB or just to complete the distance, a double parkrun freedom is simply the perfect answer.